Shannon wins vocal support of singing expert

Shannon has a better voice than Guy or Cosima, but none can match Paulini, the Fijian-born Sydneysider who was the first of the Australian Idol final four to be sent packing.

That's the considered opinion of Michael Halliwell, the head of vocal studies at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

Dr Halliwell will start auditioning 150 potential singing students next week as part of his role at the "Con". But he agreed to start the process early by listening to the Australian Idol four, and evaluating the technical quality of their voices for the Herald.

Dr Halliwell, 50, is a South African-born, London-trained former opera singer who has sat through thousands of auditions to uncover vocal potential.

He had not seen the hit television show before yesterday when he sat in his sound-proof office and worked his way through studio recordings and live television performances of Guy Sebastian, Shannon Noll, Cosima De Vito and Pauline "Paulini" Curuenavuli .

So has the show, as claimed, unearthed real talent?

In general yes, says Dr Halliwell, though his opinion of hot favourite Guy would seem to run against popular opinion. "Shannon's is probably a voice with more range and more dynamic variation and colour variation," he said.

"I would classify Shannon's voice from a classical point of view as a light lyric tenor, with a nice easy extension to the top. I think he uses it pretty intelligently, carefully. He is the most comfortable vocally of the four in terms of what he is singing And I think it's a good, strong voice."

Dr Halliwell feels Shannon could respond well to classical training, even though the technique is completely different. "Mozart maybe, nothing too heavy, no big dramatic operas."

He considers Guy's sound pretty, but limited. "It's almost like a speaking way of singing, it's not really using the full vocal mechanism."

Dr Halliwell agrees that voice quality and star quality are not always the same thing, and that judging the technical quality of voices can depend on repertoire.

But he rates Paulini above Shannon. "Her voice has areas where I think it makes it a little more interesting than his. Of all the four singers she has the widest range of colour.

"It's a voice with a lot of substance, a strong voice."

Although he was taken with Cosima's presentation and "pizzaz", Dr Halliwell found her voice "fairly limited in sound".

If Shannon were to turn up at the Con for auditions after next Wednesday's final episode of Australian Idol would Dr Halliwell be interested?

"Certainly, we have students that audition by singing popular songs. We get a lot of potential in voices - what is in a voice that hasn't yet come out. For me [Shannon] shows a lot of potential in the voice and he'll probably take it a lot further."